knockknock.biz luggage tags. Photo courtesy of justinph.

I guess it's finally time for me to level up.

It was the summer of '99 when I convinced my then editor to send me on a tour of the U.S. videogame industry. When I finally returned three weeks later, my head was still spinning. I felt as though I'd seen the future of entertainment. It was then that I made it my mission to put NEWSWEEK's coverage of this growing medium on the map. I did that in print, with cover stories on the Japanese launch of the PlayStation 2 and the spread of online gaming. I did it online, with the debut of the blog N'Gai Croal's Level Up. I did it on television, with appearances on MSNBC and CNN. You all watched me push, prod, praise, scold, discuss and debate videogames across multiple media, both mainstream and enthusiast. That's because my editors were prescient enough to let me apply my talents and establish my reach beyond the magazine, from co-blogging with MTV News to writing a monthly column for Edge and more. For this, I say to them all, thank you.

Having achieved all of this, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I've accomplished what I set out to do ten years ago. And now it's time for me to take that decade’s worth of accumulated knowledge and do something else with it. After Friday March 6th, my passions will take me beyond the world of journalism. I’ll be wearing many hats on this new journey: videogame design consultant, media strategist, consumer technology reporter, columnist, blogger and, as always, provocateur. You’ll be able to keep track of my various adventures at ngaicroal.com, and feel free to reach out to me via email at ncroalbiz@gmail.com. It’s been a pleasure conversing with all of you, and I look forward to continuing our dialogue in the years to come.

Cheers,

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss, edited by Level Up

The Idea: Game reviewers and game players get so hung up on minutiae-i.e. game controls and combat systems-that too often, they miss what's important and innovative about games. This in turn creates a culture where gamers are searching for aspects of a game to dislike. Instead, what's needed are more critics and gamers who champion particular developers and games.

The Thinkers: Leigh Alexander, Ben Fritz, Keith Stuart

The Sources: Sexy Videogameland, The Cut Scene, Games Blog

The Quotes: "When a title attempts to explore uncharted areas, it risks stumbling into areas that have been neglected for a good reason--because they don't work as well. But when we fault them for trying, without recognizing that the game might have done a few new things well, or when we treat creativity or an attempt at inventiveness as a design flaw, we're sending the industry some problematic mixed messages. We demand innovation and invention, and then we crucify any attempts in that direction."
--Leigh Alexander, Sexy Videogameland

"[I]n the case of games that are different in some way (like a new IP, or a sequel from a new developer as in the case of "Silent Hill: Homecoming"), a lot of videogame critics obsess about the small stuff because they don't like the big picture....If we re-arranged our priorities, I think we'd have more critics "championing" certain games or developers. In the end, that's what I'm calling for and I think that's what Leigh's implying. In the film world, there were critics who championed the then-radical filmmakers of the '70s who transformed the world of cinema. Wouldn't it be great if there were more videogame critics who championed certain titles or artists, while acknowledging their imperfections, the way Leigh does "Silent Hill: Homecoming" and Hideo Kojima?"
--Ben Fritz, The Cut Scene

"[I]f it were a movie, Mirror's Edge would be critically lauded by the specialist film press--it would be considered a forward-thinking masterpiece. Sure, it's dangerous to compare two such different media, but there are key similarities--one is the way in which critics should be able to deconstruct the experience on offer and draw from it undeniable values that outweigh concerns about basic construction. For example, no-one complains that, say, 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'Eraserhead' lack the formal, easily recognisable narrative structure of a conventional movie. Their aspirations exempt them from that requirement. So should we really be marking Mirror's Edge down for control issues--a game that aspires to re-interpret the very interface between player, screen and character? Yes, I know, it's a clumsy comparison, but the underlying point is--should reviewers just accept that sometimes incredibly new experiences will lack some of the formal substance we expect from traditional games? That's what innovation is, it's leaping out into the unknown."
--Keith Stuart, Games Blog

The Reaction: Personal tastes aside, we don't buy the argument that the nature or the amount of innovation in a game should exempt it from criticism in other areas that determine how a reviewer or critic evaluates a game's quality.

 To read the rest of today's installment of "The Big Idea," click on the link below.

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: A teenaged male's wish fulfillment story is the best way to make a movie out of The Sims.

The Thinker: John Davis, movie producer

The Source: A Q&A on Collider.com

The Exchange:

To read the rest of today's installment of The Big Idea in its entirety, click on the link below.

Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: Do people who play a single game exclusively have the right, um, idea?

The Thinker: Chris Dahlen

The Source: GameSetWatch

The Quote: A $60 game purchase can either be the best value for your entertainment dollar, or the worst. On the one hand, we have games that are disposable entertainment - an experience that can be consumed in 8-10 hours and set aside.

While bonus achievements or a token multiplayer mode might extend the short lives of Dark Sector or Condemned 2: Bloodshot, you're really supposed to treat them like this week's Hollywood blockbuster: catch it on opening night, forget about it by the next morning. As a critic, I see plenty of these disposable games. Vampire Rain. Viking: Battle for Asgard. Bullet Witch. In the crit biz, we call these "rentals."

But let's look at the other extreme, where a new game isn't like a movie, but a sport. You can obsess over Rock Band or Warcraft the same way that a golfer keeps hitting the links. Yes, you're shelling out for the sequels, the expansions, the online fees and other add-ons, but at heart you could play the same game and stick with it for months - all while finding new partners and competitors to challenge and fuel your rise to dominance. Isn't that the mark of a great game?

And what if the industry focused more on one-game players? Instead of jumping on the next big thing and finding out it's Heavenly Sword, or worshipping the graphics of an E3 demo only to find out you've been drooling over Assassin's Creed, or wasting even an inch of copy on the latest movie tie-in game--what if the biggest factor in how we judge a game was its durability?

The Reaction: First, let's do the math. $60 for 8-10 hours of gameplay equals $6.00-7.50 per hour. That's more expensive on a per-hour basis than a two-hour movie (but cheaper than, say, a Broadway show). Even worse, if you've spent $60 for the game, gotten a couple of hours in and determined that it's not as good as you'd hoped, your choices are to a) put it away and waste the money you've spent; b) play on, grimly, in an effort to wring the full value out of your expenditure (though as we've said previously, your playtime also has value); or c) trade it in to GameStop for some fraction of what you paid for it and use that store credit for something else. If, however, a game provides you with 80-100 hours of entertainment, you're looking at 60 to 75 cents per hour. That's a great value by any medium's standards.

To read the rest of today's installment of "The Big Idea," click on the link below.

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: Who is this Adam Maxwell guy, and why the f--- is he saying that writers don't matter in videogames?

The Thinkers: Zach Schiff-Abrams

The Source: The Cut Scene

The Quote (from Zach Schiff-Abrams): As a film producer I have drawn and quartered many a writer so usually I leap at the chance to jump on any bandwagon that is founded on lynching the writing community. Unfortunately this retard doesn't know his ass from his elbow, so here's my 15 cents:

"When a writer sits down to build a story, they are usually building a plot." Here's what's inherently wrong with this moron's argument. Ask any self-respecting writer (and every f---ing last one of them motherf---ers are self-respecting) what they do when they sit down to build a story and they'll tell you the first thing (and the most important thing) they do is create characters. In fact, most good stories in any medium usually come from a landscape where the writer almost obsessively focuses on creating and developing characters in a vacuum that doesn't rely on any plot. There are no good f---ing plots, there are only interesting characters that inform a plot...

What I have been arguing for years upon years is that videogames desperately need more writing. And now we're finally at a level technologically speaking where we can actually integrate the creation of character into the very fabric of the gameplay experience. You still argue? You think GTA is a successful franchise?  Think how much more successful it would actually be if Alvin Sargent or Jonathan Lethem was taking seriously the creation of character in that world? Then you wouldn't have Fritzy writing about how videogames are challenging movies for the media dollar, then my nerdy friends, then there wouldn't be any more movies.

Instead you have this dweeb and unfortunately way too many of his kind running the videogame industry that think in way too small of a box.

The Reaction: We've been following Maxwell's blog since last year, which means we not only read his original post, but the two other posts he wrote on the subject here and here. The challenge with his series of posts on his topic is that the, ah, writing was not always as clear as it should have been.

To read the rest of today's installment of "The Big Idea," click here. 

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: Gamers contain multitudes. Why doesn't our language reflect that?

The Thinker: Mitch Krpata

The Source: Insult Swordfighting

The Quote: The reason "hardcore" and "casual" fail as classifications for gamers is because each of those classifications contains contradictory meanings.

Essentially, when you call someone a hardcore gamer, you are saying nothing about what type of games they like to play, or the manner in which they like to play those games. You are simply saying that this guy seems to really like games. Is that helpful to anybody? If anything, it leads to the sorts of pissing matches that inevitably overwhelm online game discussion. That designation becomes a badge of honor to be defended instead of what it should be--a simple, objective term with no value judgments attached.

There's no reason a Tourist can't be "hardcore"--no reason he can't be the sort to simply rip through one game after another in search of unique experiences. No reason a Perfectionist can't be "casual," and simply try to master, say, Wii Carnival Games. A Wholesale Player may still want linear, narrative games like Okami, and a Premium Player might be getting his money's worth with quick sessions of the latest Tetris. Who in that group is the casual player? Who is the hardcore player?

So if there is no easy or quick way to combine these questions of taste and value, maybe that's a blessing in disguise. Maybe that means we can stop stereotyping ourselves and broaden the conversation. We gamers contain multitudes. It's time we realized it.

The Reaction: We thought we had made a genuine contribution to the never-ending discussion of videogames when we coined the term "hardcasual." But Krpata goes much, much further. In 11 brief, provocative posts collected under the heading "A New Taxonomy of Gamers," he eloquently argues that we should unpack the assumptions built into the overly broad terms "hardcore" and "casual." Instead, he says, we need to evaluate our tastes in videogames along multiple axes that are more precise, such as:

To read the rest of today's installment of "The Big Idea," click on the link below.

 Rodin's "The Thinker." Courtesy of innoxiuss; edited by Level Up

The Idea: It's time to destroy the "cult" of gamers--starting with the term "gamer"

The Thinker: Douglas Wilson, game developer

The Source: GameSetWatch

The Quote: The Church of Gamers is not only morally problematic; it also ends up working against innovation in the medium. Imagine, for example, how ridiculous it would be if all television watchers identified as their own "Tubers" subculture. It’s a humorous hypothetical precisely because a vast majority of first-world citizens watch television, from the romantics who tune in for soap operas and sports fans who catch game highlights over breakfast, to the sci-fi fans addicted to the latest Joss Whedon serial and insomniacs who watch old game show reruns.

To read the rest of this introductory installment of "The Big Idea," click on the link below.